Tag Archives: goat

Monday, 4.11.2013
We have squeezed out (agreed on) 15 minutes of additional sleep from Agnese. The news arrive that a Russian eclipse observer has outpaced all. He had gone 50km in the direction of Sudan and seen the full eclipse phase. We are a little bit envious. Many enthusiasts have arrived for the solar eclipse. We meet a traditionally obese American lady from Dakota. A meter thick layer of snow has fallen in Dakota. Here in Lodwar though, the temperature is 35 degrees Celsium.

After breakfast the first activity is restocking of food. We are looking for a shopping center with a sweet name of Kilimanjaro supermarket. Moving through the bumpy streets of Lodwar we find a humble one-storey building with this vibrant title. Having bought the products we head out. In the streets of Lodwar one can see both modern people dressed in jeans and ones dressed in the traditional tribal costumes. Colorful ethnic palette.

Past the window a semi-desert with few trees is sliding. It seems a person can not live here. But suddenly, in this abstract environment appears a figure, dressed in a cloak, thin legs with a stick and seat under his arm, going somewhere in a direction known only by him. The existence of humans is shown by goat herds. Goats are the main means of living for the people here. They give milk, blood and sometimes meat. How many goats are needed for a family to survive, remains a mystery. The number of goats is a measure of a family’s wealth. Ilgonis reads pieces from the Kulik’s books on Kenya. How to control a donkey. To stop the donkey it should be pulled by the tail, to accelerate should be hit under the tail with prickles. But what are the camels doing here? I did not see that anyone using them. Maybe they are wild?

The people living in this desert earn some money by gathering stones for building and burning charcoal for grill and selling them to city dwellers. For the most part, these desert people live in small huts of branches. In places here called cities, probably the government, builds more serious houses with tin roofs. Will these desert people feel good in those?
One stretch of road is considered to be dangerous. So a guard with a machine gun joins our company for 2000 shillings again.

Our driver has become quite energetic. The car runs jumping on the scary road potholes. Once in the end, we see our suitcases hanging in twines. A little more and they would have been lost. We have come to the accommodation unusually early. Marich pass field studies centre. We have decided for comfort and are renting double rooms. Since there is plenty of time until the darkness we are going on an excursion. We are accompanied by great horde of children and are giving them souvenirs – pencils. The local village. House size around 6 square meters. Arrangement is poor, without a chimney. Only the small children are sleeping with their parents. Big kids get their own house built. We are talking about the local weddings, beer from sausage tree fruits, poligyny (several wives).

Past our accommodation a fast river is flowing. During the day we noticed women rinsing something in the river. This is gold apparently. We try out swimming in the river. The kids are very pleased that such a stout uncle as me goes swimming. River is shallow and the water is rapid. A very refreshing feeling. A beautiful sunset on the river. Dinner and then off to sleep in our beds.

Sunday, 3.11.2013
Sunday, it’s been a week since we left Latvia for our trip to watch solar eclipse in Kenya. Today the set wake-up time was 7 AM since we were in no hurry to get to the next destination that was Kolokol near lake Turkana or Lake Rudolf as it was called before. Obviously we departed only after two hours as that’s our normal pace in mornings. Usually when we have a strict plan we can be ready in about 1.5 hours, but today we haven’t got such so we take our time.

Staying here at Lodwar is really nice because we have normal beds and I don’t have any more to wake up several times per night to get back blood circulation in the hand on which I was sleeping. Sleeping in tents has some advantages like being close to nature and being cheap but also sleeping is a bit uncomfortable. Well may be I just should sleep more in tents and this feeling comes from my lack of experience.

So at first we went to Eliye Springs which were located near the Lake Turkana. Eclipse started only at 4 PM so we had some free time to spend. Eliye springs was an excellent place for that. Agnese told us that Eliye springs was once a famous resort but it wasn’t so popular anymore. Roads north from Lodwar were much better than roads till now. Of course there were lot of holes but still we were driving much faster, oh, and there were no speed bumps. Eliye springs is located approximately 60 km from the main road.

To drive to the very resort was rather complicated since there were dunes starting in the proximity of the lake, so the car started to stuck and everyone had to leave the car to get it lighter. The temperature n shadow based on Ilgoni’s thermometer was around + 38 C, not sure how precise was his device, but the day was definitely extremely hot. Also the sun was strong and bright. This was actually the first day when I decided to use the sunscreen as already in the morning one could feel that the day will be hot. And, taking into account that it was planned to walk outside the car, I realized that if I don’t put the sunscreen on, there is a big possibility to get sun-burned. Usually I don’t use anything like that.

There were quite many people in the resort, music was playing, one could immediately see that many tourists have come, of course, to see the eclipse. For me the most surprising thing was an outdoors swimming pool as I didn’t expect to see anything like that in a perishing resort and at first I didn’t find it sensible at all. Later I understood as the water in the lake was very warm, too warm to cool down. When I went into the lake it felt like we could spend there the whole day, but of course, it gets boring after a while, so we went out one by one after a while. The time which was intended to be spent in this resort was only one hour, but I think it was excellently spent as the swim in the lake refreshed us from the horrible heath.

When considering the water of Lake Turkana, it is a bit brownish, but clean after all. If one drives his fingers through the water it seems that the water is a bit soapy. We discussed already when going to the lake that it is most likely caused by the carbonates in the water. When discussing it with Anders, we decided that it’s a sweet-water lake because we couldn’t feel any salt in mouth if swallowing some water and also the water of the lake is used for drinking.

Near the resort, as everywhere in Kenya, there were armed guards with machine guns. But it is a common thing here, so nobody is paying attention to it anymore. Of course, there were local articles as souvenirs under offer – all kinds of wicker baskets and other things that are very liked by older people.

After visiting the resort we went back to the main road to go to the eclipse place. It took an hour from the resort to the main road. The next object to visit in our plan was Namoratunga stones which supposedly have had an astronomical significance. But for me much interesting was the diversity of the sceneries and nature which could be observed while driving rather than a couple of humble stone blocks. The stones were located on the right side of the road, around 20m from the road. It was easy to spot them – they are rather big and cylindrical, dark stones, but yes, in my opinion nothing interesting, not really worth to stop for.

However, the scenery was extremely interesting. For Kenya characteristic mountains in the background, acacias around, all kinds of small thorny bushes, dried river beds. On the roadside one can see camels, donkeys, goats grazing and different small birds. Camels is another surprise of this trip for me as I was sure that all the camels are domesticated, but here one could see rather many of these animals, not looked after by anyone. Of course, I might be mistaken since also for goats it is not often easy to spot the goatherd, however most likely they belong to someone, but it seemed to me that these are animals living in wild. It did not seem that the camels were too interesting for locals. I am not sure about the donkeys whether the ones observed could be classified as wild animals or not as I didn’t see any people.

Wednesday, 30.10.2013
Last thing I heard the previous evening was that we should meet at breakfast at 8:30 with all the bags already packed so that we could leave Nairobi as early as possible. It was planned to travel by two 4WD. It was agreed that the cars will arrive at 19:00 the previous evening. But when we went to sleep there was no sign of the cars. In the morning only Ināra, Vitolds, Rūdolfs and Anders. Turns out that plans changed at 2am since there was still no sign of the 4WD. In morning our colleagues had gone for groceries shopping by the lodge owner’s car. They returned after 9am with news that instead of two 4WD we will have one 8-seater Toyota Landcruiser with a driver. The owner of the cars, found out where we are planning to go and knowing the quality of roads, was afraid that the promised cars won’t be able to withhold the route.

We were waiting for the driver and the 4WD for a very long time. Finally we left Nairobi shortly before 12pm. We should go for around 230km. In Nairobi suburbs apparently is a criminogenic situation as the houses are as small forts – windows with grills, a fence around territory with strong metal gate. At first we were going along a highway of not the best quality, but still a highway. Along the route we saw tea plantations. Later something like a semi-desert. When Suswa mount appeared in sight, we stopped at a sightseeing place. It was interesting for me to see the sand whirlpools in the semi-desert scenery.

At Suswa mount started the Maasai lands. Our destination was Maasai Mara. To get there, soon we turned left on the highway. That was a shame since soon the tarmac road finished, but we still had more than 100km till our destination. We made them almost offroad. There was a gravel road, but so bumpy that the drivers had made new paths on the sandy ground. From time to time we met some Masai person who was grazing goats, in some places also sheep and cows. In the bushes we also noticed their miserable homes – clay huts.

At 17:30 we reached our campsite “Acacia camp”. We were shown places for tents with a fireplace nearby. Since there was no firewood and we had prepared to make dinner on gas stoves, fireplace didn’t interest us that much. There were toilets and showers in the camp. When we started to prepare the dinner, two Maasai people visited us and brought firewood for the fireplace. That was a friendly gesture for free. After the dinner Ilgonis and Agnese introduced us to the stars of southern hemisphere. The Maasai people offered to guard us in the night – a friendly gesture again.